Where the radiator blows

We looked, by all appearances, like a family going camping. The roof rack was jammed with a tent and Army-issue sleeping bags, the ice chest already leaking in the blast furnace of our un-air-conditioned Falcon. We were even headed up I-5 in the direction of Kings Canyon. But we all knew it was just an act, a dress rehearsal. We weren’t hoisting a tent pole unless the radiator gods let us.

Growing up in a family with a genetic predisposition for owning cars that blew up, I had come to view the radiator as the most fearsome piece of technology on the planet. Its volcanic moods and insatiable thirst were a constant source of dread that left deep scars on my psyche.

The tension would start to build around Castaic as the six of us inched our way up the I-5 in surface-of-Mercury heat. As soon as I spotted the first car pulled to the side with its hood up, I knew it wouldn’t be long. Soon the temperature gauge would be deep in the red zone and the sights and sounds of imminent geyserville upon us: the tea kettle whistle that would turn into an angry, alien howl; the smoke billowing up from the engine; multiple “Oh, nos!” from my mother.

We’d pull over, and my dad would commence the taming ritual, disappearing into the steaming cauldron armed only with a rag and the camping dream. With his patented jerk-and-get-out-of-the-way technique, he would loosen the radiator cap and unleash Old Faithful’s wrath. Then we’d try to slake the dragon’s thirst from the assortment of containers brought just for this occasion.

Each minute seemed like an hour as we crept up the I-5 toward the inevitable next eruption. And so it went through radiators boiled and reboiled, and even different vehicles. The Country Squire had air conditioning -- but we couldn’t use it because it would overtax the radiator, which boiled over anyway, worse than the Falcon, always keeping up the suspense. Would we make it? Bakersfield was the terminus when we didn’t.

If we got past the Ridge Route and Dante’s Central Valley Inferno, we still had to climb the steep, fumarole-fomenting switchbacks from Squaw Valley up to Grant Grove. This prompted more blastoffs, more jugs of water. If and when we finally rattled into the campground at Cedar Grove, we knew we had earned our patch of dirt under the firs -- and a couple days’ reprieve from the final belching fury, the Vesuvian blowup awaiting on the way back up the Grapevine.

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-- Joe Robinson